


CITADEL

by DGCatAniSiri



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Gen, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-25
Updated: 2014-06-25
Packaged: 2018-02-06 06:10:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1847344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DGCatAniSiri/pseuds/DGCatAniSiri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From Eridani Films and Risa Urvasen comes the epic...</p>
<p>CITADEL</p>
<p>It's time for humanity to earn its place among the stars.</p>
            </blockquote>





	CITADEL

Commander Shepard planted his feet and shook his head as he realized where his crew, for once out in full and in civilian clothes as opposed to their arms and armor, and with the support crew of the Normandy this time, was attempting to drag him. “You hate me, don’t you?”

“Come on, Shep. Don’t you think it’s going to be fun?” Kasumi had a wide grin on her face, the dictionary image of a Cheshire Cat grin.

“How did I let you talk me into this?”

“Come on, Shepard. It’s all in good fun,” Garrus said, hiding a snicker.

Shepard glared at him. “You think so, huh? You’ve seen the same previews I have.”

But his turian friend just shrugged. “It doesn’t look that bad to me. After all, they did have access to the unclassified records. Do you really think it’ll be a complete wash?”

That elicited a scoff from Shepard. “You’ve never seen a historical movie, ever, in your entire life, have you?”

“The liberties taken with the script don’t stop with redacting the existence of the Reapers.” Miranda’s sudden interjection made Shepard want to moan as he anticipated the other changes made to ‘his’ life story. “I managed to get a look at an early draft of the screenplay. Though, all things considered, it wasn’t that bad.”

With a moan, Shepard looked to her. “You could have stopped it, Miranda.” She was that well connected, Shepard knew. She could have found some way to shut it down if she’d been interested in doing so. 

She shrugged. “It’s a good propaganda tool, Shepard. Risa Urvasen is one of the most popular directors currently in the business. Very critically acclaimed, from what I understand. She publicizes your exploits to the general populace of the Citadel races, it gets people on your side now and encourages them to believe you and believe in you when you need their help.”

Shepard harrumphed. “I’ll believe that when I see it. Which still doesn’t explain why we’re here to see this.” In front of Shepard and his crew was a larger than life holo-poster, advertising CITADEL (it WOULD be in all caps, wouldn’t it?), announcing that ‘it’s time for humanity to take its place in the galaxy.’ A figure in N7 armor, visor on the helmet down, obscuring his features, was in a loop of moving towards the camera, a female figure in the white and pink Phoenix armor Ashley Williams had favored but with a distinct blue tint to her skin to his right and a turian in C-Sec colors to his left. The figure in the N7 armor was aiming a pistol at an off-screen threat. 

“I think it’s going to be fun, Shepard,” Tali offered. “I’ve heard you talk about needing to laugh at yourself, how is this any different?” Despite how innocent she phrased it, Shepard could hear that touch of amusement and restrained laughter in her voice. _Et tu, Tali?_ he thought to himself, keeping the thought silent just to avoid explaining Julius Caesar to the non-humans. _Philistines..._

Like a condemned man, he approached the ticket booth and exchanged a credit chit for the tickets for the group, getting some of the last seats in the theater. Despite his displeasure at his story being thrown to the public like this, Shepard was also irritated that he wasn’t recognized and offered a discount, if not free admittance. The less money he was forced to pay into to this unauthorized monstrosity, the better. That reminded him, he hadn’t approved the use of his image for this. That could be the basis of a lawsuit that would get every copy of this abomination... Who was he kidding? He hadn’t stopped the Shepard VI on those grounds, how would that work for this?

Once the movie began, he realized that the unauthorized use of his image was the least of his various irritations regarding this monstrosity.

It started off innocently enough. Sure, the _Normandy_ CIC looked more like a traditional Alliance cruiser’s CIC, rather than its modified turian style, but Shepard doubted that the Alliance would just let the movie’s set designers have access to classified military designs.

Anyone watching Shepard instead of the screen would have seen the exact moment that he broke.

The figure on the screen was not Shepard. The figure on the screen was a red-headed woman.

“Keelah...”

“By the spirits...”

“Oh my God...”

Shepard glared at Miranda, knowing that she had to have known and she hadn’t warned him. “Lawson...” he drew in a dangerous tone. If this hadn’t been a strictly relaxation affair, meaning concealed weapons only, he’d have been seriously tempted to grab a gun and point it at her. As it was, the look on his face came very close to disintegrating her on the spot.

In an unusual gesture of discomfort, she held up her hands in a wordless gesture of apology. “Urvasen is a pioneer in adapting stories about humans with gender blind casting. Apparently, test audiences found the male actor originally playing... ‘you’ to be too monotone and wooden and the studio insisted on a recast. The best actor for the part turned out to be a woman.”

Her explanation did nothing to counter Shepard’s growing desire to grab his assault rifle and shoot blindly into the theatre. Or the Presidium. If Khalisah Bint Sinan al-Jilani ever brought this up, he wasn’t going to resist the urge to punch her in the face for once. “And the reason you didn’t give me advance notice?” he said through gritted teeth. 

“I asked Yeoman Chambers to give you the message.” A brief pause. “Via e-mail.” Meaning she hadn’t wanted to deal with this in person, knowing that had she asked Kelly, she would have made Miranda do it herself. By Shepard’s look he didn’t believe her – this, Kelly would have made sure he knew about, just so he could issue a Commander’s veto and not ever see this... travesty.

“EDI,” Kasumi offered. The ship’s AI could have read the e-mail even before Miranda had sent it out and opted not to deliver it. Kelly would never have seen the message and it would never have appeared in Shepard’s inbox.

Gritting his teeth and longing to have a short but violent chat with Risa Urvasen, Shepard settled in to watch the rest of the train wreck, going through Eden Prime. Jenkins’ death, in fact his very existence, was skipped over, an omission that Shepard couldn’t decide was offensive or fortuitous. The geth were some rather impressive holo-trickery, given that there was no way to get an actual geth performer. Reluctantly, Shepard would give them points for accuracy of the geth. 

In typical Council space fashion, no mention was made of the Reapers. Instead, it was focused upon Saren, up to ‘unknown nefarious deeds.’ This brought them to the next massive change. Udina presented a calm and reasoned attitude while remaining respectful to the Council. Captain Anderson, on the other hand, was portrayed as a warmongering military hothead.

“Are they kidding?” Shepard spat. 

“Back room politics strike again,” Jacob murmured. “Apparently, Anderson voted against some legislation that Urvasen was backing and won, so this is her getting back at him.”

Deciding to keep a mental tally of the things about this film that were worthy of a libel suit, Shepard looked to Miranda. “How acclaimed is Urvasen, again?”

“I’m beginning to wonder if it’s more hype.” But Miranda wasn’t moving for the exit. She was interested in comparing the rest of the movie to the reality, probably to come up with a rationale for each one. That or she wanted to see Shepard blow his top. Whichever came first.

No major changes came up again until the introduction of Garrus. His introduction was badassedly entering Doctor Michel’s clinic and saving ‘Shepard’s’ life. He was also played by one of the most popular turian actors.

Shepard repressed a moan but he couldn’t help rolling his eyes. _And now we’re going to have to deal with his rapidly increasing ego..._ No wonder he was always calibrating. He needed to make sure that their weapons, tech, and biotic abilities didn’t hit his head instead of the mercs or Collectors, or whoever they were fighting, since it was such a large and obvious target.

“C-Sec records were made available to them, right?” Shepard asked. “Because I seem to recall that happening very differently, with me saving the hostage and you taking a stupidly risky shot.”

Confirming Shepard’s fears of Garrus needing to have the weapons deck expanded to fit his swelled head, Garrus shrugged. “Maybe that’s how you remember it,” he said. Then he realized that Shepard’s glare had as much force behind it as an Oculus blast and it seemed to deflate his ego. “Probably thrown in to add some action,” he murmured. 

“Right, because it’s been a whole five minutes since they last shot anything,” Tali observed. Given the movie’s preponderance towards action sequences, Shepard was beginning to wonder if there was any story actually in this thing. 

The introduction of Wrex seemed fairly well handled, at least when it came to the general Citadal space attitudes towards krogan. He shot Fist, at least. That much was unchanged. However their Shepard seemed shocked at the act.

“Oh, come on, really? Wrex was hired to kill the bastard, did they really think I’d bring him along and be surprised when he tried to do his job?” Shepard grumbled as he rolled his eyes. “Do they think I’m some perfect paragon who always does the ‘right and proper’ thing?” 

“To be fair, Shepard, don’t you usually take that path?” Miranda asked.

“Not with krogan. I’m not an idiot.” It was at this point that the salarian and asari couple behind him shushed at him. Shepard fumed.

Then they got to Tali’s introduction. It was obvious that they hadn’t hired a real quarian (something of a no-brainer, really, given the aversion to quarians in Citadel space, not to mention that a quarian on Pilgrimage was unlikely to have the connections to get a role in a Citadel production and not many quarians left the fleet after Pilgrimage), instead just stuffing a woman (Shepard’s money was on an asari, just to say that Tali was still portrayed by a non-human) in a suit with an obscured helmet and two fingered gloves. It wouldn’t have been quite so bad if they hadn’t selected a particularly voluptuous woman for the role, and a woman who spoke in a breathless tone of voice, as if she were flirting with everyone she said two words to as well.

“ _Boshtets_!” Tali hissed, clearly not pleased. 

“What was that before about laughing at yourself?” Garrus murmured. 

“Shotgun.”

“Shutting up.”

The thought had occurred to Shepard. He, at least, had had the self-control not to say it. The couple behind them shushed them again, this time with a little more just-restrained displeasure. But the comment did seem to cause her to limit her irritation to muttered grumbling.

The next step was the _Normandy_ going in search of Saren and the geth. They journeyed to Therum and, on the way, there were some minor character moments. Shepard rolled his eyes at the dialogue though. “Who writes this crap?” he murmured as the... woman portraying ‘him’ spoke to ‘Garrus’ in flirtatious tones, even sounding like she might tear off their clothes at any moment. 

Bemusedly, Garrus shot Shepard a sidelong look. “Commander, should I be aware of any feelings you might have towards me?”

“Only the desire to shove my boot up your ass if you bring this up again,” he growled out. Garrus made a sound like he was clearing his throat and went silent.

They reached Therum and picked up ‘Liara,’ getting in a running firefight out of the collapsing ruins along the way. Apparently, Urvasen hadn’t wanted Shepard to be the one to be responsible for the destruction of a prothean ruin, blaming it on the geth and the krogan battlemaster having a complete disregard for the historical importance.

“Is anyone else expecting these geth to let out a ‘mwa ha ha’?” Kasumi asked in a stage-whisper. “What’s with the random property damage? It doesn’t seem all that logical.”

“Geth do not damage structures without cause.” Legion’s statement came at standard conversation level, eliciting harsh shushes from the couple behind them. 

“Thank you, Legion.” Shepard’s comment was muffled by his palm, the smack of it hitting his forehead still echoing.

Next, ‘Shepard’ and ‘Liara’ began talking, the audience clearly being meant to pick up on there being a spark between them. 

“Commander, there appears to be something wrong with your eye.”

“That would be a twitch, Thane.” Liara had had a crush on him after he’d rescued her, certainly. But Shepard hadn’t returned it and had let her know before they’d made it off of Feros. Of course, the asari love interest was more Citadel space friendly since everyone loved the asari, and conventional wisdom for movies meant that there had to be some form of romance, but it was like being told that he was supposed to be dating his little sister. 

Taking pity on Shepard, Jacob picked up the explanation from there. “Humans develop them when they resist their body’s urge to choke a bitch,” he said, with just the barest of grins. Thane let out a brief ‘ah’ of understanding and nodded. 

Mercifully, from a certain point of view, the scene shifted away from ‘Shepard’ over to ‘Ashley’ and ‘Liara.’ But, to Shepard’s lack of surprise, they were talking about Shepard, practically getting in a catfight. He shook his head, burying it in his hands as he truly began to comprehend what a mockery of his friends this was. “How is it that a film by an asari writer and producer fails the Bechdel test so badly?” he muttered to Miranda, figuring she’d be the only one familiar with it. 

She seemed surprised that he knew what the Bechdel test was, but it elicited a slight smirk. “Don’t know. Add that to the list of questions you need to ask her.”

“There won’t be any asking. Just shooting.”

“That works too.” Fortunately, she didn’t comment about how, since their Shepard was female, it wasn’t technically a Bechdel test fail. 

The movie continued, taking the Normandy to Noveria. “Wait a minute. What about Feros?” Garrus wondered, as the sightings of Matriarch Benezia being on the frozen corporate world hadn’t been confirmed and told to Shepard until after they’d dealt with the thorian on Feros.

When every eye turned to Miranda, she sighed. “Apparently, besides the matter of the thorian being classified up at the highest levels of politics, Feros was deemed thematically unimportant and could be skipped without serious repercussions on the overall narrative.”

“But Feros was vitally important! That’s where Shepard got the cipher!” Tali countered.

“Yes. The cipher that allowed Commander Shepard to understand the prothean beacon’s message about the Reapers.” Miranda’s comment got a grudging nod of acceptance from Tali, given the usual reaction to any talk of Reapers on the Citadel. It also elicited another loud shush from the asari and salarian behind them. Shepard opted not to point out that the couple was hushing them louder than Shepard and company were speaking.

There was more flirting between ‘Shepard’ and ‘Liara,’ setting Shepard’s teeth on edge. On top of his other problems with it, it was damned inconsiderate – they were supposed to be tracking down Liara’s mother, who was a suspected traitor. Who thought of romance at a time like that?

Grudgingly, he would give them credit for the way that they handled the matter of the rachni – the fact that the rachni were no longer extinct was still a guarded secret, but it had been impossible for Noveria officials to hide the fact that they still had several corpses on their hands that a handful of asari matriarchs would be able to identify. So they said that Saren and Benezia were attempting to recreate the rachni, give him a series of disposable soldiers, and using klixen from Tuchanka to ‘play’ the rachni.

“’Disposable soldiers.’ So Saren is Cerberus now?” Tali muttered softly, just loud enough for Miranda to hear. The now ex-Cerberus cheerleader just shot her a glare, knowing the shot for what it was but unable to counter the truth of her statement. 

“I don’t understand why he’d need disposable soldiers if he had the geth. No offense,” Kasumi said, adding a look in Legion’s direction. Legion didn’t respond, a glance in the direction of the asari and salarian being his explanation for why – Shepard had asked that Legion not refer to itself as ‘geth’ when on the Citadel, so as not to set off a panic. The earlier comment could have just been a mech offering a critique, which, though unusual, did happen. 

“Who needs logic from crazy?” Jacob commented. True enough – Citadel space wanted Saren to be an insane madman with delusions of godhood, rather than an indoctrinated servant of the Reapers. Despite any evidence to the contrary, until the Reapers showed up on the Citadel’s doorstep, they would cling to that wild hope to the grave. I hope I get to see the look on Councilor Sparatus’s face. Maybe tell HIM ‘Ah, yes, Reapers, I have dismissed those claims...’ It wasn’t the most charitable of thoughts, but focusing on that meant that he wasn’t busy with the running tally of everything so very wrong in this movie.

With reluctance, Shepard would admit that the death of Benezia was properly heart-string tugging. Her characterization was skewed to all hell, with her having been seduced by Saren, then, when she realized how far wrong things were going with the rachni, was told that if she didn’t work with him, he’d order Liara’s death. The ‘geth’ then turned on her when she attempted to help ‘Shepard’ and ‘Liara,’ and she ultimately sacrificed herself to let the team get away. 

“Well, my memories of Benezia’s last moments are somewhat off, apparently,” Garrus murmured. “I could have sworn she demanded us to die while we were trying to talk to her.”

“They’ve done worse, Garrus. Or are you really going to say that an outright firefight in the clinic down on Kithoi Ward was better?” Tali said. Garrus contemplated it for a moment, and she rolled her eyes. Again, the salarian and asari shushed them, looking downright irritated. The entire group looked to them in equal irritation, and apparently, having a handful of the galaxies biggest badasses, off-duty or not, staring you down was enough to make even the most irritated of couples back down.

And now, they reached Virmire. Naturally, the mere thought of a genophage cure being developed and put into play was enough for that information to be redacted to all hell. Instead, it was a straight up krogan cloning facility, meant to be producing krogan super soldiers.

“Hmph. Wonder what Grunt would think of that,” Jacob said with a smirk.

“Probably something about how anything Saren could cook up wouldn’t be worth the name ‘krogan.’ He’d probably throw in a few declarations of him being krogan for good measure. And fire a few rounds from his Claymore,” Garrus said with a touch of humor.

There was no mention of indoctrinated salarians. To Shepard’s irritation, Kirrahe was ignored entirely, though he understood that STG business would probably be under the Dalatrasses lock and key, with every member’s name a state secret. 

“Here’s something that’s been bugging me. You had STG officers backing you up there on Virmire. How come none of them confirmed the whole ‘interview with a Reaper’ thing?” Kasumi asked softly. Shepard shrugged, and Kasumi rolled her eyes. 

When ‘Saren’ arrived, he was making the ‘mwa-ha-ha’ evil villainy that made Shepard roll his eyes. Saren had been far from earning sentient of the year - Shepard had read Anderson’s reports about what had happened on their mission together, and that had been long before Sovereign – but there had been a moment, as Saren had raised his gun to his temple, that had made Shepard think that there might have been something, at some point, that had been respectable. But this version... Pure evil, looking for galactic domination. They tried dressing it up with him making comments about the Council being useless and that his way was the only way to protect the galaxy, but, since the film established that the Reapers were nothing but a legend, his concerns were too vague to feel like proper motivation. 

And then the bomb, and leaving behind ‘Ash.’ That was a mess. First of all, he could already hear the bitching from the audience about how ‘Ash’ was the one who’d gotten characterization, that ‘Kaidan’ had been too boring a character to rescue. Then there were the grumblings of how ‘of course’ the romantic rival was left behind so that there wouldn’t be the competition. 

Noticing the reaction from the audience, Miranda harrumphed. “Lieutenant Alenko’s survival’s a matter of fact. Everyone knew going in that Chief Williams died on Virmire, there were numerous parades, putting all of the _Normandy_ crew on display after Sovereign’s attack, this shouldn’t be news for them.” It was nice to hear someone pointing out reality, even if it was someone who he’d brought with him. It made him feel less like the galaxy was going crazy and more that this was just a bad joke with him as the punchline.

“It’s a no-win scenario either way. They focus on Alenko, people say Williams’ death doesn’t get the emotional resonance. They focus on Williams, people bitch about how the one without enough characterization gets saved. At least this way they have an attachment to her,” Jacob said, as if he was trying to keep it quiet and avoid saying something that would make it awkward for Shepard.

He sighed, just glad that they were nearing the final act, meaning that the trainwreck was almost over. He had a long letter to write, and he wanted to do so while the details were fresh in his mind.

‘Liara’ came to ‘Shepard,’ offering comfort. The woman on the screen who was supposed to be him dropped her voice to a low, husky level, expressing a level of desire that was pretty much melting the screen. Shepard gritted his teeth, not knowing how much more of it he could stomach. They entered the captain’s cabin, mercifully cutting away before anything explicitly happened. Even the Citadel races had a reluctance to outright sex on screen for public consumption.

But they still gave them a morning after. Before the two imitations of him and Liara could attempt to try for a second round, a comm call interrupted them. Shepard wasn’t sure if he was going to laugh or shoot something when it came to be a call from the Council, authorizing a search for Saren. 

“So Risa Urvasen wants to say that the Council listened to me?” Given the absence of his gun, Shepard pretty much had no choice but to laugh. 

Even the others had to admit, given the fact that Shepard’s arguments with the Council were the stuff of legend, where Shepard would bring up some new disaster, the Council would ignore him, and he’d bitch and curse them out about it. It was something of a common Citadel space meme, even. “Now that just means that Urvasen is crap,” Garrus said with a scoff. 

“That’s like the key character trait for Shepard,” Jacob added.

“Shep being listened to by the Council? Forget the actress thing. This is proof this movie’s supposed to be in another universe,” Kasumi grinned. 

Normally, this would be the point where Shepard would comment about how he was sitting right there, they didn’t have to refer to him like he wasn’t, but he really couldn’t argue with them. As Sovereign was arriving for the attack, flanked by geth, and the movie Shepard was preparing to sneak aboard for a one-on-one fight with Saren as the invasion commenced, Shepard himself decided that he really didn’t need to see much more of this.

Which worked out pretty well – the asari and salarian had been silent for a while now. There was a reason. They’d summoned the manager. As the turian approached, Kasumi noted him and his authoritative bearing. “Well, I think that might be a message.”

The turian cleared his throat, drawing their attention away from the screen and looked the group over, eventually singling out Shepard as the leader of the bunch. “Excuse me, sir, but we’ve received several complaints about the noise from you and your friends. I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave.” He didn’t sound all that sorry, though.

Tali looked to the manager, and, though her helmet obscured her features, the human equivalent of her face right now was probably a stink-eye. “The movie’s almost over and you’re asking us to leave now?” she asked. 

But Shepard waved off her complaint. “It’s all right. I think we’re done here anyway.” He rose and led the way out.

Once they were in the lobby, it seemed that his companions couldn’t decide whether or not to laugh or to just be relieved at their escape. “Shepard-Commander, the reactions of you and the others indicate that the recreations of your adventures were wildly incorrect, rather than merely altered for public consumption.”

“In ways you can’t imagine, Legion,” Shepard said. The geth appeared confused as to why such a thing would be done. It was amusing to Shepard how the geth could be so intelligent and yet so naïve. 

Though he’d been quiet most of the movie, Thane shook his head. “Shepard, I don’t think I’ll be engaging in any further movie nights,” he stated.

“I’m in full agreement with you, Thane,” Shepard said. He sighed as they made their way into the elevator that would take them back to the docking bay. “That... was NOT... a good movie.”

“I’ll say,” Tali agreed.

“No kidding,” Jacob added.

“Horrible,” was all Miranda offered.

“You said it,” Kasumi nodded.

Only Garrus had something positive to offer. “But the effects were decent.”


End file.
